When Geoff Anderson suffered a horrific work accident, he fell into a deep depression. Then one day he received a knock on the door that would change his life, leading him to discover his Indigenous heritage language and gain a new perspective on life.
In this episode Hannah Kwon chats to Geoff Anderson about his journey from suffering a mental health breakdown to eventually turning his life around through the discovery of the Wiradjuri language. We also hear about the unique discovery made by linguistic and language revival expert Ghil’ad Zuckermann and how it led him to meet and collaborate with Barngarla woman Emmalene RichardsIdentity can mean different things to different people.
We'll explore the unique discovery made by a linguistics professor that helped pave the way for the revival of the Barngarla language in South Australia. He kept working, through his back pain, until it got to a point where he couldn't move his legs properly. Geoff's wife took him to the doctor, trying to help him perform simple tasks, like getting three or so items from the local shops, in an effort to get him out of the house and back into his Central West New South Wales local Parkes community.“And a Gamileroi lady from Parkes High School, she came up to the house and she said, 'Geoff, I'm not going to test you up.' And she said, 'But Stan Grant Senior is doing a language class over at Forbes.' Forbes is 35 kilometers away.
“He taught everybody, but as far as I was concerned he was teaching only me, you know. And it goes... .”“And that language that I was singing built a wall up between me and the whole rest of the world. There was no more-- The world wasn't coming in to attack me. I had this barrier. And when you have a mental breakdown, that's the problem, you have no barrier. It's as if you've put a bucket of water into a pool and you've filled it up and the pool keeps trying to fill it up.
When Professor Zuckermann arrived in Australia in 2004, he says there were around 400 Aboriginal languages but only 12 of them alive and kicking.
She says as a child it was disheartening to see her heritage language, history and culture not supported in the school curriculum. “As a result of that partnership, working with Ghil'ad, we have a online Barngarla language app that we've had for a number of years now, which has provided as a really important resource for young and old and all in between, as well as the community right across our country, that can access the Barngarla language app, and at any time look up any words and hear how they are pronounced.
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